‘Do you know what she does, Headmistress? While all the other girls are buying magazines and CDs and new clothes? Sam buys her clothes at The Discount Store, then comes back and cuts out the labels in secret. So no one will know. And in the holidays while most of the other girls dash off to the ski slopes or a sandy beach, she takes a job waiting on table in a local pizzeria.’
It had begun to rain, a gentle drizzle which was excellent for youthful English character but not for greying hair. The headmistress sought shelter beneath the branches of a magnificently gnarled oak. ‘You seem to know a great deal about the girl.’
‘She’s the most talented artist we have in the school. She uses her art to express herself in a way she can’t elsewhere. An emotional outlet. I think it’s a form of therapy, for all her other problems.’
‘I can’t have her problems affecting the other girls. Or her father’s problems, come to that. Do they get on – Samantha and her father?’
‘I think it’s difficult. He’s away so much of the time. And no mother …’
‘Yes, I suppose we should have known what we were letting ourselves in for when she arrived.’ She frowned in the direction of a group of girls who chirruped ‘Good afternoon, Headmistress,’ and ran off giggling.
‘Sam’s very talented,’ Mrs Ashburton insisted, trying to steer the conversation onto more positive grounds. ‘And also very well intentioned. I know she gets into scrapes with some of the other girls, but that’s no more than frustration. Look at her other side. The charity fashion show, for example. It was her idea and she’s doing most of the organization. Beneath those dark eyes there’s a huge heart.’
‘It’s those dark eyes that will get her into trouble, mark my words. I get reports of the sort of boys she sees in her town time.’ Miss Rennie pulled her cardigan defensively about her bosom. ‘We are responsible for bringing our young ladies into contact with the finer values in life, not the sort of boys whose concept of culture is to spend their evenings bragging through their beer about under-age conquests.’ Her voice carried the hint of November wind blowing through the girders of the Forth Bridge.
‘She’s sixteen,’ the arts mistress responded in mitigation. ‘Anyway, I think she’s very much her own woman. Not easily led.’
Too committed, Miss Rennie reflected once more upon her colleague. A pity. Well intentioned, a gifted teacher. But too committed. It didn’t do, not with young girls, who required above all a tight rein. The headmistress sighed; she had already spent more than enough of her day worrying about one problem child, she had other responsibilities to attend to. The hot-water system had broken down yet again; it might require replacing, at whatever cost. ‘The fees must be paid,’ the headmistress responded, ‘I owe it to the other girls. Otherwise – well, perhaps Mr Goodfellowe’s neglect will relieve us of any further responsibility in this matter.’ And with that she strode purposefully in the direction of the boiler room.
Late-night votes. Endless hours of tedium during which the parliamentary bars remained open while parliamentary minds grew ever more fixedly shut. Get through the business, don’t delay, don’t digress. Just march and vote. Then, at last, it was over and the exhausted representatives of the people could be released into the custody of the community. Goodfellowe, without wheels, had been forced to join the queue of numbed men and women who waited for taxis, and it was well after one before he clambered up the narrow stone stairs to reach his studio flat overlooking Gerrard Street. The place was pleasant enough, as small flats go, nestling in the eaves of the old Regency house with a mezzanine platform for his bed and a pine-clad ceiling that stretched up into the loft space. Once, a lifetime ago, he had lived in Holland Park. In those days he’d been able to afford a little style and a lot of stucco; now all he had was his parliamentary allowance for second homes which had to cover everything: rent, heating, taxes, insurance, the lot. Not that the heating bills were heavy, not with the meat kitchen on the floor below, where they hung the char-sui and duck on long rows of curing racks, forcing the warmth and their sweet-sour aroma upwards. It would make summer a struggle. But the location was convenient and he needed the distraction of something different, somewhere that bustled well into the night and helped fill all those sleepless hours. Chinatown never slept, not until dawn.
They had regarded him with some suspicion when he moved in, the gweilo who had come to intrude upon the different families and clans that made up the Chinese community, but he’d made a point in his first week of going to see Madame Tang at her coffee shop and introducing himself, and slowly the word had got round. Minister Goodfellowe, a man who moved in circles of power, a man of contacts, a neighbour who might one day be useful. The Chinese understood that. They insisted on giving him a title and he had never been able to convince them that he was no longer a public figure of any eminence although, in truth, he hadn’t tried too hard. It still hurt.
He had just kicked off his shoes and begun brewing a pot of light green tea when there came a persistent buzzing from the intercom. ‘Minister Goodfellowe! Minister Goodfellowe!’ He was tired like a lashed horse but almost welcomed the intrusion, his emotions still restless, his bed as always cold. The buzzer sounded again. He looked around for his shoes then decided he couldn’t be bothered, relishing the cool stone stairs as he padded down two flights in his socks.
He opened the tall door to find Jya-Yu and Uncle Zhu standing on the step, silhouetted against the green neon of the Jade Palace across the street. Uncle Zhu was wearing a suit, carefully buttoned, and his hair was slicked down against his scalp. Jya-Yu was smiling nervously. ‘Sorry, very late. We wait until we see your light.’
‘Waiting all night? What for? Not more trouble?’ he asked, exhaustion leaving his words sharp with accusation.
Immediately he felt a louse as he noticed she was holding a plate on which were six assorted Chinese honey buns. ‘Cakes from cousin’s bakery. For you, Minister Goodfellowe. For thanks.’ She held the plate forward.
A noise whose origins lay somewhere deep within Uncle Zhu’s throat began. To Goodfellowe it was utterly incomprehensible but the Chinaman was also holding something, offering it up. Goodfellowe found himself being presented with a construction of chrome and cables and rubber which, on inspection, transformed itself into a lightweight collapsible bike.
Uncle Zhu’s head was bobbing effusively.
‘Also for thanks. Minister Goodfellowe,’ Jya-Yu chirped.
‘This is … so unexpected. Most kind,’ Goodfellowe responded, his tired judgement juggling with the implications. He was growing accustomed to the mercantile Chinese mind. ‘But how much will this cost?’
‘No cost. For thanks. To replace old one.’
The bike was surprisingly lightweight, he could hold it in one hand. ‘It would be very useful,’ he conceded, ‘but I can’t accept something so valuable. It could get me into trouble.’
He tried to offer back the bike, but Uncle Zhu refused and began an animated exchange with his niece.
‘Uncle Zhu says he get bike in payment from poor customer. Uncle Zhu not ride bike. You take it, no problem.’
‘I think I would like such a bike,’ Goodfellowe responded, turning the neatly folded package over in appreciation, ‘but I couldn’t accept it as a gift.’ He took a deep breath. ‘How much does your uncle think it’s worth.’ He dug into his pocket and came out clutching a solitary twenty-pound note.
Uncle Zhu’s brow darkened. Goodfellowe realized he had committed a mortal offence by offering him money. ‘You must understand,’ he stammered, ‘a politician can get into great trouble for accepting gifts. People have such suspicious minds. Dammit, they’ll even do away with Christmas next.’ He looked wistfully at the machine. It would be – would have been – the perfect answer, yet it seemed he must lose the wheels just as he had caused Uncle Zhu to lose face.
Suddenly Jya-Yu brightened. ‘Better way,’ she exclaimed. ‘You not take the bike, Minister Goodfellowe. You borrow it instead. Long term.
And if Uncle Zhu ever need it, he take it back.’ Her face lit in mischief. ‘But you understand, his legs very short. I don’t think he can reach pedals. So you take care of it until Uncle Zhu’s legs grow.’
They both laughed, while the Chinaman stood immobile and uncomprehending. Goodfellowe, his objections overwhelmed by her advice and perhaps just a hint of avarice, gave what he hoped was a dignified bow and accepted the bicycle and the plate. Zhu smiled in relief and immediately turned away, Jya-Yu scurrying after him.
‘Just as long as it didn’t fall off the back of a lorry,’ Goodfellowe admonished as they retreated.
‘Oh, no, Minister Goodfellowe. It not even touch the ground. Look, no dents.’
And they were gone, leaving Goodfellowe clutching six sticky buns and a collapsible bike.
‘You look like a train-spotter.’ Mickey Ross, Goodfellowe’s secretary at the House of Commons, was nothing if not direct. She was also mid-twenties, vivacious, Jewish, formidably competent and possessor of a biting wit delivered with a lingering trace of Estuary English which marked her out as being not quite like the rest.
On this occasion no one could argue that she was being less than objective. She had walked in to find Goodfellowe standing in his parliamentary office, his trousers still confined within bicycle clips, his shoes hurled to the far side of the room and a raw toe poking through a new hole in his sock.
‘New shoes. A waste of money,’ he muttered.
‘The old ones were practically walking on their own,’ she scolded.
‘Anyway,’ he riposted, ‘aren’t you wearing the same clothes as yesterday? Didn’t you get home last night?’
‘I got waylaid,’ she mumbled, losing herself within the pile of morning post she was carrying.
‘With Justin?’
‘No. Not with Justin,’ she replied, sounding as if her fiancé’s name had suddenly become a complicated foreign language.
‘Mickey,’ he lectured, ‘I thought you said you have principles.’
It was a mistake, he should have known better. She only knew one means of defence, which was onslaught.
‘I do have my principles and I had my principles last night, too. It’s just that I lost them.’
‘Where?’
She pouted. ‘In the hotel lift on the way up to his room. I left them in a bag. A very small bag. Don’t worry. I found them again this morning on the way down.’ And with that she dumped the mountain of morning mail on his desk. It overflowed like an exploding volcano onto the floor, and he bent down to retrieve it with a groan. ‘And Beryl has just called,’ she added, with bite. ‘The reception on Friday week starts at seven prompt and I’m to remind you once more that it’s one of the biggest fund-raising bashes of the year.’
His groans grew more passionate. Beryl Hailstone was the chairmonster of his local party in Marsh wood. A woman of similar age to Goodfellowe, she had once made a pass at him, had been rejected in instinctive and unthinking horror, and had never forgiven.
It seemed unlikely that this was to be Goodfellowe’s day, for on top of the pile of correspondence he had retrieved from the floor was a letter from his bank manager. The letters from his bank were getting shorter and more peremptory in the months since the old manager had been forced to make way for a new, younger model. The personal touch and understanding had gone, and in its place Goodfellowe had found only codes of financial conduct set by computer and implemented by automatons who sounded on the telephone as though they should be selling fruit from a barrow in Brewer Street.
‘Sorry,’ Mickey offered, her concern genuine. She was always the first to know. She was the one who sorted out the rental for the fax machine and computer, booked his train tickets, picked up his dry cleaning, took care of so many corners of his private life and knew often before he did when the autumn of his accounting had turned to harshest winter. Like now.
He shivered. ‘Do you find you can never sleep?’
‘Sadly not. Men simply don’t have the stamina.’ She paused, noticing the shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes. ‘But something’s troubling you, Tom.’
‘I had another set-to with Sammy.’ His tone was quiet, stripped of all pretension.
‘What was it this time?’
‘The usual. She wanted money for some charitable fashion show she’s putting on at school. I said something … well, she caught me at the wrong moment, I suppose. So she stormed off without any money, I was left without any invitation and I don’t even know when I’m going to see her again. My own daughter. Added to that I got a bollocking last night from the Chief Whip for missing several votes. He was particularly foul. I think I’ve decided I hate the entire bloody world. Or is it simply that they hate me?’
With a sense of bitter purpose he drew back his desk drawer. Reaching within, his fingers closed around a feather-flighted dart. He measured the weight in his hand, smoothing its feathers, stroking it as though like a weapon of mercy it might relieve him of all his cares. Then he hurled it in the direction of a notice board on the opposite wall on which was hung a collage of images already peppered with holes. A photograph of Beryl Hailstone. And one of the Chief Whip. The letter of introduction from his new bank manager. His Liberal opponent’s manifesto from the last election. A photocopy of an uncomplimentary piece by a Guardian sketchwriter. And other pieces. The bill for his final car service just before he sold it. A final demand. The label from a bad bottle of Australian Shiraz which had promised undertones of blackcurrant but instead had suggested beetles. Items from his life brought together by only one strand of logic, the fact that he loathed them.
The dart missed completely and stuck fast in the panelling above. He’d failed again.
‘Bugger it. I can’t even be miserable any more.’
Mickey began to laugh, playing with his self-pity, challenging him to turn his frustration on her, to find an outlet and let it pass. Clouds of anger flooded across his eyes, warning of the approaching storm.
‘You’re a witch.’
‘You’re right. And I shall probably burn. But in the meantime,’ she said, sitting primly on the chair in front of his desk and taking out her notepad, ‘let’s see if we can’t cast a spell on a few others. Like the bank manager,’ she announced, ticking him off a list. ‘He’s young, bound to be pathetically impressionable. Invite him to lunch on the Terrace. For the price of a plate of subsidized sausage and a half-decent bottle of wine you’ll be able to tie up your overdraft for months. You can invite me too. I’ll be sweet to him, and you know I’m irresistible.’
‘You are incorrigible.’ He meant it as an ill-tempered accusation. ‘How do you have the nerve to slink out of hotels looking guilty?’
‘I don’t. What’s the point in slinking out looking guilty when you can stride out and let everyone know you’ve had a good time?’ Ignoring his scowl, she returned to her list. ‘Darling Beryl will be quite content if you’re on time and wearing trousers and are nice to the right guests. I’ll type you out a list.’
‘If God is merciful I shall die first.’
‘So long as you’re wearing trousers, that’s fine.’ She put the notepad aside. ‘Then there’s Sam.’
He sucked in a lungful of air and released it, his body shaking, as if he were trying to expel all the twisted emotion within and start afresh. ‘I’m a father, a replacement mother, a social worker to seventy thousand constituents and common bankrupt, all at the same time. No wonder I make such a mess of everything.’
‘You’re not bankrupt yet.’ She was determined not to give his self-pity office space. ‘And none of it is Sam’s fault.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘Of course you do. But does she?’
‘I take the point. I hadn’t realized you threw in your services as an agony aunt, too.’
‘I’m Jewish and I’m still breathing. What do you expect?’
‘I long ago learned to stop expecting anything,’ he said, meaning it.
‘Look, yo
u’re supposed to be the grown-up one. So you haven’t got an invitation to the fashion show. You think she’s going to issue one in gold-block lettering and send a chauffeur-driven car? Go. Surprise her. If you can’t find the right words, at least show her that she’s more important than your bank manager or bloody Beryl or any number of your complaining constituents. Just be there for her.’
A chink of light appeared through the storm clouds. ‘OK,’ he nodded. ‘Put it in the diary, will you.’
‘I already have.’
‘For pity’s sake, won’t you let me win one round?’
‘For your sake, not if I can help it.’
He stood up abruptly. ‘That’s it. I’ve had enough. I’m going to leave you to handle all the post today on your own. I’m going off to broaden my mind.’
‘Where, in case Downing Street or the Vatican should ask?’
‘You can tell them I’m going for a therapeutic Chinese massage. With one of Jya-Yu’s prolific tribe of cousins, Dr Lin. She’s set me up with some free sessions.’
‘This isn’t something menopausal, is it?’
‘If it is,’ he said, searching for his shoes, ‘I intend to enjoy it.’
He was halfway through the door when he turned with an after-thought. ‘Tell me, what would you do if you discovered that Justin had – how can I put it delicately? – spent the night in a hotel room?’
She stretched out a leg, casually examining her tights, as though deeply unconcerned. ‘I’d have him for sausage stuffing, little bits and all.’
‘Do I detect the odious whiff of double standards?’
‘Not a bit. A man doesn’t get filleted for what he’s done, but for getting caught. I’d remember that, if I were you, while you’re having your Chinese massage.’
Corsa’s relationship with women benefited from two principal advantages – three, if one remembered his ability as a press proprietor to keep the dogs at bay. The first was his sense of physical control – the green-black eyes, the hand movements, the careful tailoring, even the deliberate way he walked, not hurrying as some shorter men might. Others waited for him. His second advantage was a wife who had known even before they had married that she would have to share him, and not solely with the Granite. But besides the Granite, she comforted herself, there could be no other mistress of importance. And there never had been. Sex for Corsa was simply another aspect of power, to be exercised and indulged over as broad a landscape as possible, particularly with wives of important men, the sort of St James’s club men who could neither hide their disdain nor satisfy their brides. An empire of English cuckolds, as outdated as the ugly oil paintings that hung in their drawing rooms. The saving grace in Corsa as far as most women were concerned was that they knew exactly what they were going to get – a physical intensity which he would lavish on them in the most elegant of surroundings, for a while, so long as business did not intervene. ‘A hand on my chest and an eye on his watch,’ as one of his lady acquaintances had remarked, but not in complaint. The eyes hovered restlessly, trembling, like the tip of a hawk’s wing, but the smile at the corner of his mouth was constant and unwavering. So was the passion. Irresistible, for some. Then, with an insouciant wave of farewell, it would be over.
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